What does it mean to really belong to a place, a community, an ecosystem?

So much of the way that ‘modern life’ is lived is displaced from the land, other peopleand the living beings around us. Western culture is one of movement, competition, isolation and consumerism and along the way many people have become resigned to the loss of home - somewhere we truly feel we belong.

Deep down we feel the hiraeth, the homesickness, and yet don’t know where this feeling of sadness comes from or how to heal it. We search for relief amongst the things that have caused us disconnection from our place and catch only glimpses of a different way to be, a way of magic and mystery and wildness and soul; a way that perhaps we have somehow lost and long to return to.

One place in which western culture looks to learn about deeper connection is the indigenous traditions that remain on our planet – timeless ways of living that honour the relations between ourselves, the creatures and the land around us. These traditions seem to hold a sense of spirit central to a harmonious way of being on the planet that has been somehow displaced in the West.

And yet, so much ‘difference’ now exists between the two cultures, so much grief is held by so many for the abuses and disrespect of the past and present. How do we begin to bridge the gap in order that we can learn from each other? How can we find the common ground that makes us all indigenous once again to Planet Earth? How can we all find our way home regardless of the culture, lineage, beliefs and place that we find ourselves within.

In this three week intensive, we will look closely at the cosmologies and traditions of selected indiegnous traditions, focussing specifically on understandings and interactions in the relationship between humans and the natural world. We will explore how elements of indigenous ways of knowing, western scientific thought, experiential practice and ritual can inform our own personal and collective thinking, feeling, stories and actions around place-making, nature connection, community and culture repair and sustainable living.

This will be an intensive that brings together theory and practice, critical thinking and direct experience, as we work together to ask, and hopefully find answers to, some of humanities core questions around place, home, belonging, connection, indigeny and sustainability. You will be joined by a number of studetns from Schumacher College's postgraduate programme in Ecology and Spirituality which will allow for rich interaction and dicussion.

This can also be taken as separate short courses

Exploring Ritual

06/03/2017 to 10/03/2017With Colin Campbell and Carolyn Hillyer | Join us for this week in which we explore RITUAL – the theory, the practice and the experience. Expect time in the classroom, solo time, preparation of ritual objects and ceremonial food and deep vigil and ceremony in a roundhouse on the wild moor.Read More...

Nature Connection - Practice, Place and Purpose
13/03/2017 to 17/03/2017With Jon Young, Phil Greenwood and special guest Colin Campbell | In this week we will bring together the indigenous traditions of South Africa and the British Isles to look at the connection between humans and the more-than-human world. What might we do improve this 'nature connection', what benefits would it bring to our lives and the world around us and what might it mean for humans globally?Read More...

Native Science and Western Thought - Two Worlds Within One
20/03/2017 to 24/03/2017With Greg Cajete and special guests | Join us for a week with Greg Cajete and guests as we explore the paralells and differences between western thought and native science - can the two be used together for a more expanded way of looking at the world?Read More...

Teachers

Colin Campbell

Colin Campbell grew up in rural southeastern Botswana, the son of a renowned anthropologist and a creative healing mother. He is currently a practitioner of traditional African medicine, based in Cape Town, South Africa and the UK. He receives clients from all over the world, and facilitates international group processes relating to natural law, transformation, healing & personal power, sacred sites, and cross-cultural cosmology.

His work bridges major world cities with ancestral homelands and forgotten wilderness, taking him from the Amazon Basin to Los Angeles, the sacred sites of Venda to the urban grit of Johannesburg, and remote Ethiopia to the City of London. Colin co-founded and co-runs a training school in Botswana for traditional doctors and sangomas with his brother Niall Campbell. He is also a lifelong artist and musician, his style once again bridging the traditional with the contemporary, the timeless with the timely, and the sounds of the sacred with the lyricism of electric rocking funk.

Jon Young

For over 30 years, Jon Young has been a leader in the field of village building, nature-based education, Permaculture and cultural mentoring, implementing vital advancements in the understanding and benefits of effective nature- and people-connection modeling. Jon is a deep nature connection mentor, wildlife tracker, peacemaker, author, workshop leader, village builder, consultant, inspiring public speaker and storyteller. He has appeared as an expert in numerous documentaries concerning nature and ecology and travels to teach widely throughout North America, Europe, Australia and southern Africa. He has authored and co-authored several seminal works on deep nature connection and connection mentoring, including What the Robin Knows: How Birds Reveal the Secrets of the Natural World (2013), and Coyote's Guide to Connecting to Nature (2007) among other titles in print and media. As a founder of the 8 Shields Institute, Jon Young has established best-practices process for cultural modelling and nature connection mentoring. He is actively promoting village building globally as a nature-based model of cultural regeneration for the benefit of current and future generations.

Greg Cajete

Greg is a Tewa author and professor from Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico. He has pioneered reconciling indigenous perspectives in sciences with a Western academic setting. His focus is teaching "culturally based science, with its emphasis on health and wellness.Currently he is director of the Native American Studies program and associate professor of education at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Currently he is director of the Native American Studies program and associate professor of education at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

Carolyn Hillyer

Carolyn Hillyer is an artist, musician, writer and traditional drum maker who lives and works in the deep heart of Dartmoor’s wild hills. She is the host of Thirteen Moons international women’s festival at her moorland farm, where many of the workshop journeys that she creates also take place. She travels widely with her work, from Japan to Canada to Arctic Siberia.

Fee:

£ 2 200.00

Course fees include all meals, field trips, materials and all teaching sessions. The programme will run from Monday of the first week to Friday afternoon the last week, and includes twenty nights private accommodation and all vegetarian meals from the first lunchtime you arrive through until the lunchtime before your departure. This course is expected to be based in the elegant surrounds of the Elmhirst Centre at Dartington Hall.

Get In Touch

By Telephone

By Post

Schumacher College is part of the Dartington Hall Trust, a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and as a charity(company no. 1485560, charity no. 279756). Registered office: The Elmhirst Centre, Dartington Hall, Totnes, Devon TQ9 6EL, United Kingdom